Both: Hey, everyone!
Jen: It's Jen and Greg with an update on our travels.
Greg: This time we're talking about Glasgow as well as our failed attempt to tour the area around Oban.
Jen: Or as we like to say, “Oh, no-ban.” (laughs)
Greg: Yeah. We'll start with the train ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow was pretty quick. I think it was like an hour or less.
Jen: Yeah.
Greg: We got to Glasgow and we noticed a couple of things that were strange, almost surreal.
Jen: Yeah. One of the first things we noticed was the amount of yelling — random yelling — that happens in the city. Um, it's not people saying, “Hey, how ya doin’?” No, just random screams. And we mentioned this to a couple of people as we talked about our travels along the way and they're like, “Oh, yeah, that's just a Glasgow thing.” So if you ever go to Glasgow, be prepared…random yelling.
Greg: Yeah. And it was strange. Somebody yells and and like, people look around, like, “Why are you yelling?” It's just what they do. I don't know.
Jen: (laughs) Yeah, it was like, “Should we be concerned? Should we offer help?” He was fine. Just yelling.
Greg: Yeah. Uh, besides the yelling all of the garbage cans everywhere we went around Glasgow were overfull. Garbage was all over the street. And we thought maybe it was just us. Maybe it's because of the time when we were there - there was a Killers concert that was supposed to happen that weekend. So maybe the area was just kind of overwhelmed with people. And, and they weren't expecting that, but we've gotten confirmation from a couple of different people. Nope, that’s just Glasgow.
Jen: Yeah, I did notice the trash. It was a bit of an issue. It kind of just makes me feel sometimes that maybe people aren't necessarily proud of their city. It was really sad to see the trash bins overflowing in the park next to the cathedral, just full of garbage.
Greg: Yeah. So we took a walk down George Street, past George Square, which is right across from the Queen Street train station. And it's an interesting little square, big statue kind of monument thing in the middle, some statues around the outside, but overall it wasn't you know, super noteworthy, I think.
Jen: So it's a good gathering place. I mean, there were kids chasing birds everywhere. We learned that that's one thing that's universal. Children all over the world love to chase pigeons.
Greg: Yeah. We continued past the park and then we passed some very positive sides of Glasgow.
Jen: Yeah, we passed a few really cool wall murals. The entire side of a building's painted, and there were a couple really pretty ones. I looked the artist up later — I think he was from Canada — and they were supposed to be more modern representations of some of the saints of Scotland.
Greg: And they do really paint off the whole side of a big building.
Jen: Yeah, that was really cool.
Greg: So, passing some of those murals, we got to High Street and turned and went to the Glasgow Cathedral, which was great Gothic architecture. Massive cathedral.
Jen: Yeah, we got there a little bit too late in the day to actually go inside, but it was still really pretty to see from the outside. And right on the side of it was the Necropolis, which was a huge, huge cemetery, very old gravestones, some of them.
Greg: Besides the Gothic cathedral and the Glasgow Necropolis we walked back towards our hotel, which was right on the corner of Buchanan Street, which is another draw to the Glasgow area.
Jen: Yeah, it's a pedestrian area that is a lot of restaurants, bars, shopping, that kind of stuff. Kind of like the Domain in Austin.
Greg: Yes, but with some older buildings and architecture on the sides of it rather than newer construction.
Jen: Right, right.
Greg: So when it came time for Oban, we hopped on a train. I think it was about a three to four hour train ride. And the scenery during that train ride was just stunning.
Jen: Yeah, that was probably one of my favorite train rides we did. And usually, on these longer train rides, I'll look out of the window at the scenery for maybe five, ten minutes, and then I just grab my Kindle. But this one was a little different. I couldn't stop looking out of the window.
Greg: There was a woman sitting right near us who had engaged with us while we were all getting on the train that, at several points, we must have made faces because she would just look at us and go, “It's amazing, right?”
Jen: She would always let us know if something really good was coming up, like, “Hey, make sure to look out of the window.” (laughs)
Greg: Yes. She was also one of the people that when we explained what we experienced in Glasgow said, “That's just Glasgow.”
Jen: (laughs)
Greg: So after this great train ride, we're doing well, having a good time. Check into the hotel, and the first thing that we did was take a tour of the Oban Distillery.
If people are wondering why, that's the area and the distillery we chose because I worked with a young man from Scotland. I mean, he grew up in and around Austin, but his youngest years were in Scotland, and he would go back to Scotland all the time to see family and stuff. That was Nick, and he's the one that introduced me specifically to Oban Scotch. It was the one that I liked. We had a good time. And, unfortunately, Nick passed away of colon cancer when he was 30 years old.
You know, it still hurts a little bit. This was just sort of something that felt right. If I'm in Scotland, I'm going to go get a tour of the distillery of the scotch that Nick and I shared together.
Jen: Yeah, it was a really cool tour too, because it reminded me of the old Mr. Rogers’ episodes where they would take you to different places like the crayon factory or when they made apple cider. Kind of show you how things are made. That's what this tour felt like.
Greg: Yeah, it really did. It was a very educational tour about the distillery.
The coolest part of the tour wasn't even actually about the whiskey.
Jen: Yeah, the coolest thing was actually learning that the distillery was there first. And the entire town of Oban built up literally around the distillery, starting right next to it and just kind of going out from there.
Greg: Yeah, which really only left this, like, rocky cliffside behind it as the option for expansion. So they began to excavate and they found a cave.
Jen: That's not a big deal in and of itself necessarily. But, they found human remains inside the cave, which turned out to be a family that was from the Mesolithic era.
Greg: Yes, and for people who may not be aware, that's essentially like Stone Age kind of timeframe. But they were hunter gatherers and they must have found what everybody keeps telling us about Oban, it's great for seafood and fishing.
Jen: So they actually wound up traveling across what is now the English Channel, but of course at that time, was just land. And wound up in Oban. The remains and everything are now in a museum in Edinburgh, I think the Scottish Museum. And the cave has been sealed off, and nothing else has been touched.
Greg: I enjoyed the distillery tour.
Jen: Yeah, it was neat.
Greg: So after the distillery, we just pretty much went back to the hotel. We did dinner. We went back to the room because we wanted to get well rested. The next day was a big day.
Jen: Yeah, we were going to take a driving tour of the Glencoe area and then it would end with lunch at the harbor at a seafood restaurant. And then we were going to be able to hop on a boat to take a tour around the Hebrides.
Greg: However, when we were waking up in the morning, we heard a couple of voices that sounded like they were very close to our window. I peeked out to check, and it's two police officers who are in the process of taping up the street right next to the hotel. Huge section of the town, completely taped off.
Jen: Yeah, it's a sleepy little town. And so, there's one road that runs through basically the entire town. And it was tape for as far as you could see.
Greg: Yeah, so that whole thing was blocked, and when we looked online, the alternate route was 83 miles out of the way.
Jen: Yeah, and that 83 miles becomes a big problem when you're supposed to take a driving tour.
Greg: Yeah, absolutely. We were getting breakfast when Jennifer got a phone call. It was the tour operator.
Jen: Yeah, he was calling to let us know that the streets were closed and there had been a traffic incident was the information that we had. He was very kind. He offered to take a roundabout way — I guess the 83 mile one — but he said, “We're gonna miss a lot of what you're doing this tour for so it's probably best if we just go ahead and cancel.”
Greg: Yeah, so first tour they just said, “Here, take a refund. We can't do it.” So I asked Jennifer, “What is this gonna mean for our second tour with the Hebrides and the wildlife?”
Jen: Right. So I had actually reached out to the tour operator for our afternoon water tour asking if we were still gonna be on schedule and she told me, “No that they were gonna have to cancel that one too.” Basically because the road that everybody would need to take to get there was still closed.
Greg: So eventually we were able to gather from hotel employees that in the middle of the night, someone who was driving like a big truck or moving van or something, hit a person who was walking back home and drug them for five miles. And I guess then realized what they had done and then abandoned that vehicle, which turned an area about a mile outside of town until an area about another mile or so outside of town and everything in between into a crime scene. Meaning, pretty much the whole town. So that's why it was all taped off. You couldn't walk through it. You couldn't drive through it. And it was like that for almost the whole day.
Jen: Just to be clear, we're not making light of the situation and we're not complaining. We realize that this was a very sad and serious situation. But we wanted to share how we had plans in Oban and why they didn't work out.
Greg: Right. The next morning, we took a train. It was the same one we enjoyed before, but in the opposite direction.
Jen: And I got to see a Highland Cow this time!
Greg: Indeed you did! The next update will be about all of those Highland experiences we had on the Isle of Skye, as well as in the Loch Ness and Inverness area. Just bear in mind, it's a lot of information, so we will probably break it up into two or three updates.
Jen: Yeah, it's a lot of stuff. I know you guys will like it.
Greg: For those who may be getting tired of hearing us talk about Scotland, after the Highlands update we will tell you about our time driving around Ireland.
Jen: Yeah, left-hand side drive. That's all we need to say.
Greg: Yeah, but I'm the one that drove it.
Jen: I know, but I had to watch it! (laughs)
Greg: (laughing) Okay, well, as our trademark seems to be…thanks for checking in!
Jen: And we'll see you at the next stop!
